Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou

Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou (22 December 1930-13 July 1989) was the leader of the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran from 1973 to 1989.

Biography
Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou was born on 22 December 1930 in Urmia, West Azerbaijan, Iran to a wealthy feudal family and was instructed in a quranic school. He later moved to Sorbonne in France and completed his education there, and he met his wife Helen Krulich in Czechoslovakia. Ghassemlou was fluent in Kurdish, Persian, Arabic, Azerbaijani, Assyrian, French, English, Czech, Slovak, Russian, and German and he returned home to Kurdistan in 1952.

In 1973, Ghassemlou became the leader of the Kurdish Democratic Party in Iran and supported the coup that overthrew Shah Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi in 1979, but they participated in the last hour and the Iranian rebel leader Ruhollah Khomeini saw their involvement as opportunistic. Khomeini demanded that all armed groups in the country turn in their weapons, but Ghassemlou demanded autonomy for Kurdistan and refused to lay down his arms. He fought against Iran and Iraq during his wars for independence or autonomy and in 1988 he set out to meet with Iran after the end of the Iran-Iraq War in Vienna, Austria.

In the meeting room in Vienna, he was shot three times at close range and killed by the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and National Security.